Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to the Nile or the Nile Valley.
  • adjective Of or relating to the peoples who speak Nilotic languages.
  • noun A large group of Nilo-Saharan languages, spoken in South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and northern Tanzania and including Masai.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to the river Nile in Africa: as, Nilotic sediment; the Nilotic delta.
  • In ethnology, denoting the eastern division of the Sudanese negroes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the river Nile.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the Nile or the people who live on its banks.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to the Nilotic languages or the people who speak them.
  • noun A group of languages spoken in parts of Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to the Nile River or the people living near it
  • adjective of or relating to or constituting the Nilotic group of languages
  • noun a group of languages of East Africa belonging to the Chari-Nile group

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin Nīlōticus, from Nīlōtis, from Greek Neilōtis, from Neilos, Nile.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin Nīlōticus, from Hellenistic Ancient Greek Νειλώτης.

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Examples

  • T’Shael, a linguist by profession, might have found the term "Nilotic" more applicable.

    Dwellers in the Crucible Margaret Wander Bonanno 1990

  • These civilizations of the old world, among which the Mesopotamian and the Nilotic were the earliest, were built on no unsound foundations.

    Myths of Babylonia and Assyria Donald Alexander Mackenzie 1904

  • The mass of the Egyptian people is to-day, as in Pharaoh's time, of the old "Nilotic" stock.

    The New World of Islam Lothrop Stoddard 1916

  • South Sudan has been rent for decades by local conflicts between its three main pastoral Nilotic tribes, the Dinka, Shilluk and Nuer, who routinely launch raids on one another for cattle and women.

    Eric Margolis: Sudan Faces an Earthquake Eric Margolis 2011

  • It was a quick three-day excursion on a cruise boat, and once at the nearly vacant house of Sobek, where only a few foreign researchers milled about, I drank in the seemingly mystical exhibition of the crocodile-god in a gallery of ancient Nilotic scenes.

    Richard Bangs: Quest for the Lord of the Nile Richard Bangs 2011

  • It was a quick three-day excursion on a cruise boat, and once at the nearly vacant house of Sobek, where only a few foreign researchers milled about, I drank in the seemingly mystical exhibition of the crocodile-god in a gallery of ancient Nilotic scenes.

    Richard Bangs: Quest for the Lord of the Nile Richard Bangs 2011

  • The Nilotic Egyptians are quite different ethnically from the Arabs of Arabia, Syria and Iraq, but they all share a mostly common language, religion, and sense of pan-Arab identity.

    Eric Margolis: Egypt: The Next Volcano? 2010

  • Curiouser and curiouser, I was to find out that Riccardo Orizio had, since the book's publication, given up his extensive foreign correspondent career to take up residence in one of the last remaining wildernesses of the world: the Masai Mara savanna of Kenya, the 1,500 square mile home of the Maasai, a cattle-herding Nilotic tribe.

    Karin Badt: From Devils to Zebras: Riccardo Orizio's Safari in Kenya 2009

  • Languages: Arabic (official), Nubian, Ta Bedawie, diverse dialects of Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Sudanic languages, English; note: program of "Arabization" in process

    Sudan 2009

  • Obama is an African (presumably Dholua or other West Nilotic) word, not a Semitic one.

    Chris Matthews: Terrorist Tape Came From Obama -- Er, Osama -- Headquarters 2009

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